Home Secretary Theresa May is right to warn that we must be on our guard
against British jihadis

Every month a new batch of British Muslims leaves the country to risk their lives in Syria’s brutal civil war. For some, the hazardous journey is nothing more than an opportunity to alleviate the suffering of their co-religionists, after three years of bitter conflict that have now claimed an estimated 150,000 lives.

For others, particularly those who have been exposed to the extremist views of radical preachers teaching in British mosques, their purpose is not so benign. Apart from waging jihad in the name of Islam, they travel to Syria with the firm intention of linking up with militant Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, hoping to join specialist training camps where they will receive instruction in the latest terrorism techniques, such as sophisticated bombs hidden in printer ink cartridges.

Figures recently compiled by MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, indicate that at least 500 British Muslims have travelled to Syria as jihadis, where they have met up with radical Islamist groups such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which seeks to create a hardline Islamic state in “liberated” areas of Syria and Iraq.

Of these, some have perished on Syria’s battlefields, such as 41-year-old Abdul Waheed Majeed, a father of three from Crawley who blew himself up after driving a truck packed with high explosives into a Syrian prison this year. Others, having experienced the brutality of a conflict where captured fighters are routinely decapitated in public and their heads paraded on sticks, decide that the rigours of jihad are not for them, and opt for returning home to lead a normal life.

But, so far as our national security is concerned, the real problem centres on the hard core of British jihadis – those who return to Britain as hardened fighters fully versed in the latest terrorism techniques.

The danger posed by them was highlighted this week by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, when she published her annual report on the Government’s strategy for countering terrorism. “The growing threat from terrorist groups in Syria,” she said, had been the most significant development in the fight against terrorism in the past year.

Mrs May’s remarks neatly summarised the conclusions reached by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), which coordinates the work of our intelligence agencies, whose latest assessment says that the threat to the UK from returning jihadis is equal, if not greater, to the long-standing threat posed by al-Qaeda terrorists based in the lawless tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

For many years following the September 11 attacks, “Af-Pak”, as it is known by the intelligence establishment, routinely topped the list of countries posing the most risk to the UK, with an estimated 75 per cent of terrorist plots directed against Britain having links to the region, including the July 7 bombings in London in 2005.

So long as the majority of al-Qaeda’s leadership continues to be based in the tribal areas, the region will remain an active threat to Britain, especially if – as many believe – the Taliban retake control of large swathes of Afghanistan once British and other Nato forces complete their withdrawal at the end of this year.

But, as the latest JTAC assessment shows, no sooner have we learnt how to negate one threat than another emerges, thereby providing a timely reminder of the ever-changing nature of the peril we face from Islamist terrorists.

Apart from its closer geographical proximity, British jihadis have been drawn to Syria because, once they have entered the country, it becomes far harder for Western security agencies to disrupt their activities.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, constant surveillance by drones and other monitoring devices means al-Qaeda activists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organisation’s leader, are limited in their ability to travel and to communicate with the outside world.

In Syria, however, such constraints do not apply. The country’s Russian-made anti-aircraft missile systems mean that drones are unable to monitor or disrupt the activities of Islamist terror cells so that, so long as they are able to survive the conflict, they are free to travel and act with impunity.

The freedom of movement and action foreign extremists enjoy in “liberated” areas of northern Syria has not been lost on the traditional al-Qaeda leadership in the tribal areas, which is believed to have sent several emissaries to the region to assist with training and instruction in terrorist skills, in the hope that a new breed of sophisticated extremists will return home equipped with the know-how to orchestrate a new round of attacks.

But while it may be harder to track the jihadis when they vanish into the Syrian cauldron, that does not mean the authorities are not waiting for them when they emerge. At least a dozen of the 250 or so British jihadis who have returned home so far have been detained on terrorism-related charges, while others have been relieved of their passports to stop them joining overseas terror groups.

If measures like this show we are on the jihadis’ case, they are by no means foolproof. For the chilling reality is that, so long as the Syrian conflict continues, vigilance must be our watchword.